Fear of meningitis???

[BunnyBunny]

So, this morning, when I woke up, and I lifted my head from the pillow, I'm sure I heard a small crack, and I had a stiff neck. It hurt really bad, and I couldn't even put on my sweatshirt, or put my chin to my chest. I took a hot shower and an advil, and started my day as normal. During school, my neck felt better, I had a slight sore throat, but I could easily ignore it, and I stopped thinking about it, so it went away.

When I went home, my neck still hurt, so I took another advil. I was getting a bit worried, and I made the biggest mistake. I googled it. Symptom checker said it was meningitis, and after a bit of research, I got scared. I started having a very very small headache, so small that I could easily ignore it. I then got a fever, well, I didn't feel sick, but I felt the back of my neck and my forehead, and it was warm. I began panicking, and believed I DID have meningitis. Just now, I took another hot bath, and my felt my headache went away, but it still hurt very slightly behind my eyes if I think about it. My fever got better, but I'm still scared.

Meningitis takes 24 hours to kill someone, right? And it's been about 12! I'm scared out of my mind, on the verge of an anxiety attack, and I just don't know what to do! Everytime I think more about it, I just get worse, and now I'm feeling a bit nauseous.
Please help :weep:

[Gary A]

You've woken up with a stiff neck, most probably from sleeping in an awkward position. Nothing more.

None of the things you mention even remotely point to meningitis. You would be violently ill, feverish, vomiting and nauseas, amongst a hell of a lot of other things.

Rationalise this. Do you honestly, truly, 100% believe that you're ill enough to be 12 hours from death, simply because of a stiff neck and a barely noticeable headache?

Come on.

[FlightlessFlamingo]

Anxiety can make you feel feverish. I've been hot and cold for a few days now.

You'd be unable to even stand up at this point if you had meningitis (the bacterial type you're worried about anyway, there is viral meningitis but a lot of people get that without realising and just assume it was flu or a bad cold).

[Scaredlady]

Your sore throat, "But I could easily ignore it".
Your fever, "Got better".
Your headache, "But I could ignore it".

If you had meningitis your symptoms would not improve (without medical intervention) and equally there is no way that you could "ignore" it, easily or otherwise.

Stay off Google (I say this as someone who resorted to Google numerous times and it made me more frightened).

None of what you have described in anyway indicates meningitis (in my opinion), I think you can relax, you are not dying.

[axolotl]

I've had bacterial meningitis when I was a teenager. I woke up with the worst headache I've ever had, vomited green sludge into the kitchen sink, was covered in a rash, and was unconscious in the back of an ambulance about an hour later.

I was certainly not on the Internet pondering if I had it! It is a dramatic illness, there is nothing "ignorable headache" or "slight sore throat" about it. You need to get past this, because you will have a lot of colds, flus, viruses and allergies in your life which will cause headaches, sore throats and muscle pains.